A quality test analysis of the displays on the two hottest smartphones of the year gives an edge to the 4 inch screen on the Apple iPhone 5 over the 4.8 inch display on the Samsung Galaxy S III. The analysis was done by DisplayMate which says that the reason that the iPhone screen is better has to do with the 20 year refinement of the IPS LCD screen used by Apple as opposed to the OLED display, developed in-house by Samsung.

The two hottest smartphones on earth

The extensive report (which can be fetched by clicking on the source link) gives the Apple iPhone 5 kudos for having the highest Contrast Rating for High Ambient Light score on any mobile device DisplayMate has ever tested. Of course, the subject of the Pentile Display on the Samsung Galaxy S III came up and the testing showed that power limits inherent with OLED screens make the display on the Samsung Galaxy S III half as bright as the one on the Apple iPhone 5.

DisplayMate says that when it comes to the Color Gamut and Color Accuracy, Apple has made a strong effort in making colors very accurate on the iPhone. On the other hand, DisplayMate chides Samsung for not bothering to calibrate the Color Gamut on its OLED screens, leading to wildly inaccurate color representation includsing over saturation of colors which is a standard on AMOLED screens.

How can it be the same, but bigger? It's simple physics, something that's bigger is bigger, and therefor different. More vertical pixels= different, 4.0 vs 3.5= different, 44% more color saturation= different. U have been schooled.

You mean another "penTile" SuperAMOLED display? We should all adopt the philosophy of comparing unreleased products with actual tangible ones you can buy at a store. The Note II has the same low brightness and bad color accuracy of the S III, which is baltantly obvious just by looking at the videos.

Are they aware that Apple did not manufacture the display but that either LG or Sharp are the actual manufactures for a small sum of them and Samsung who has the greats capacity is the major manufacture of the IPS screens?

The actual display screen is just one part of the puzzle - there's also the driver components, circuit board design and firmware/FPGA code. The point being that while Apple didn't make the display, it speced out the parts and made them all sing together.

Sony makes the sensor for the iPhone, but the image capture on their own Xperia line is subpar to the iPhone. LG is one of the producers of the IPS panel that the iPhone uses, but the panels on their own LG phones can't seem to match. Some of these companies just simply manufacture the components. They didn't design them or have the rights to use them in their own products. Other's don't know how to utilize their own stuff with other components and polish it into a complete system that's superior.

come on stretch that little dinky 4 inch screen to 4.8 like the GS3 and then you can compare... feature for feature...size. ram. speed.. google maps. sd. battery the GS3 is far more superior. the only addition for the 5 is lte... still lacking.... nfc...sd storage.. you are forced to buy the 32 or 64 gig version to make Apple even more rich

The speed of the iPhone5 is faster in both benchmarks and real world usage. The S III still can't achieve the same smoothness. The battery is on par, but Samsung had to decrease the screen brightness drastically to achieve it. If you didn't bother to look at the charts, their AMOLED panel takes literally over 4x the power with the same screen area to achieve the same brightness. The iPhone5 has LTE and its the same chip as everyone else's. 4" is the perfect size for one-handed operation. Bigger size does not mean better. That's why there are so many screen sizes. It's a dumb metric. Otherwise people would be trying to cram tablets in their pocket and bragging how BIG and so much better their "phone" is.

The One X, Lumia 920, and other flagship phones don't have microSD slots. It allows for thinner and more robust builds. Samsung makes some of the worst snap-on back covers in the industry. Flimsy and creaking. The carrier stores have to tape them up because you can't attach a lock on them as the backcover will break off. Many users put cheap and slow microSD cards that slow down the entire system. That's why Google wanted to axe them in the Galaxy Nexus and why WP7 didn't offer microSD support. The embedded storage is faster and of higher quality. That's why it's more expensive.

Apple is rich because their high-end phones have high demand and they keep a very tight distribution infrastructure and pricing with suppliers. If you think the iPhone is expensive, you should look at the cost of other flagship phones like the Galaxy S III. They start at $600+ at launch and are just as high unlocked as an iPhone in international markets. The demand drives up the iPhone's price, but Apple doesn't benefit from it nor do they raise their wholesale price to dealers. Other phone companies have all the same opportunities. They just don't know how to do it properly to make money.

Oversaturated colors of AMOLED are maybe inaccurate, but color accuracy is, believe it or not, needed only in professional photography/DTP, not in mobile.

Effect, in terms of atractivity, is actually more needed for mobile devices. It's like loudness in sound - boost lows and highs and you get very attractive sound, which is more pleasant to listen everyday than real, neutral sound that audiphiles and producers want - for job of course.

So this comparisons are uneccessary - the real thing comes from impression of the consumers in everyday use. I personally think AMOLED displays are more appropriate for aesthetics of mobile phone usage - because almost everything about them comes to that point eventually.

Those are just your assumptions of what mobile displays should look like. Even companies like Nokia are putting high-resolution IPS displays on their flagship instead of sticking with their own OLED tech. Smartphones are used in various environments, especially outdoors, and LCDs can achieve dramatically higher brightness, because usability is very important. Then there's all the other caveats of using AMOLED, like the high power consumption, penTile matrix, and degradation of the panel itself. The market is not as obsessed with AMOLEDs as it use to be or as much as you would think. Otherwise Motorola, Nokia, and other companies wouldn't be switching to IPS right now even though AMOLED is "allegedly" the future. The dim brightness and gaudy colors that make me throw up are a turn off for a lot of consumers.

You could say that, but those are my attitudes as an industrial designer. I'm well aware of what makes qualitative dimension of visual representation in technology, I'm surrounded by pro equipment in that matter for my whole professional life. I know very well what IPS is, and what OLED is.

IPS LCD is certainly a superior screen than AMOLED in most categories, except three of them: response time, viewing angles and blacks.

However almost all of benefits of IPS LCD screen is not very important for mobile usage. I would say that AMOLED offers something utterly attractive that aesthetically acompanies that which modern smartphone really is - a fashion accessory and a toy.

That doesn't mean I don't recommend IPS in mobile usage. On contrary, I was so glad when someone (Apple) finally realized how good this is. I was suffering of bad screens for a decade before industry decided to go IPS on massive scale, only thanks to the boost of LG's production line by the great cooperation with Apple for iPhone 4.

I just wanted to tell that this comparisons are practically worthless. User experience, and most of it aesthetic experience is on the first place, and quality here doesn't equals what quality is for professionals that use this for a job.

BTW, Nokia doesn't make their own AMOLED screens. Those are Samsung's. And also, PenTile is not inherently tied with OLED tech, but for now there is still no efficient method for producing full RGB AMOLED matrix for high pixel densities.

I'm pretty sure that if the reports were reversed you all would be celebrating your little victory, but since the apple display was"said" to be better you are making excuses. I'm not saying it is better because I've only used the Gs3 and not the ip5. I personally found the gs3 display to be very nice.

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